Rei (x12)
by Shinichi06
Summary: 12 Words in Rei. (12 ficlets prompted by different kanjis that are pronounced "Rei".)


FF – Free! Iwatobi Swim Club

Rei

Warnings: None-ish. Slash, maybe.  
Characters: Rei(-centric), Nagisa, the gang  
Pairings: Nagisa/Rei  
Summary: 12 Words in Rei. (12 ficlets prompted by different kanjis that are pronounced "Rei".)

A/N: The best thing about the Japanese language is how a lot of words are read the same. The worst thing about the Japanese language is also how a lot of words are read the same. Some of the readings may be more obscure than others, but they can all be pronounced "Rei".

A/N2: Inaccuracies may arise; I'm actually rubbish at Japanese.

1. 冷 (Cold)

He felt the chill run along his skin as he pulled himself out from the pool. Even in the warm, summer evening, he's cold. Water dripped from him, fast, then slow, glistening orange and pink, and he doesn't check his timing on his watch.

He screwed up. He knew he screwed up. His turn had been clumsy and weak.

He sighed. Try again, then.

On the other side of the pool, Nagisa was laughing with Makoto and Haru.

There's a strange feeling inside him. Somewhere between drowning and falling. His turn wasn't the only thing that was weak. Inadequacy never sat well with anyone, but he hated it the most.

Try again, he nudged himself.

He stepped up, readied himself for another lap. He's not aiming for another personal best – he's completely off his game today – but at the very least, he needed to do better.

He took a deep breath.

"Rei-chan?" He turned, and Nagisa was smiling at him. A soft, quiet smile. "Good work today. You've been working hard."

"Nagisa-kun."

"You should take a break! You must be exhausted."

"It's fine. I'll just swim another lap."

"I'll swim with you then!"

Nagisa beamed at him, and he didn't feel that cold anymore.

Huh.

Strange.

2. 怜 (Intelligent)

He's starting to find an attraction towards Nagisa's hair. It's gold and honeyed, and if he pressed his face into it, Rei was sure that he would find the scent of Nagisa's strawberry shampoo, and he yearned to lean close to inhale deeply, to breathe in everything that was Nagisa.

The teacher is talking, but he's not taking in anything. All he could focus on was Nagisa. The outline of his frame, the steady breaths he took, the minute fidgets that he made, all memorised and etched like stone carvings in his mind.

This was bad, wasn't it?

So much for Kyodai. So much for Todai.

He wanted to write an ode to Nagisa, make sure that Nagisa knew how amazing, how alluring, how enthralling and wonderful he was. He wanted to play a guitar while singing some cheesy love song before Nagisa's bedroom window, and he wanted to present bouquets of roses and shower Nagisa with chocolates and strawberries and everything else that Nagisa loved, because he wanted Nagisa to know that he is loved.

Hell, he'd swim to Antartica to catch a penguin for him.

This is bad.

He should change seats. Change schools. Move out of the city. Migrate. Go somewhere so far that Nagisa's laughter wouldn't echo in the wind, or his smiles won't shine like morning beams, and his touch won't warm like a summer's day.

He should, but he can't, and he spent the rest of the lesson watching Nagisa's back. As usual.

Contrary to his name, Rei felt like such a fool.

3. 励 (Encourage)

"Ehh, this sucks. Rei-chan, I bet you were top in class again, right?" Nagisa bemoaned beside him.

"Yeah…"

His name was at the top of the name list, but he felt more concern for Nagisa. Before the exams, he had offered to tutor Nagisa in maths, but Nagisa had declined, claiming that he didn't want to impose. He wish he had been just a little bit more fervent, though, because Nagisa now had to sit for a re-test.

"Nagisa, let's go to the library."

"Huh? Okay."

He pulled Nagisa out from the crowd that had formed around the bulletin board, and they walked along the corridors. Nagisa's hand was warm in his. When Rei looked to him though, his eyes were downcast, so he paused in his steps to pull Nagisa towards him.

"Rei-chan!?"

"Nagisa, your retest will be better, okay? Don't worry." He's rubbish at this. Comforting people wasn't something that he had had to do a lot. Apart from textbook examples and cliché methods on tv, he hasn't got any idea how else to do it.

He's surprised when Nagisa laughed, a chesty chuckle that reverberated against his skin, reaching deep into his body till every cell could feel it.

"Rei-chan, you're really not cool, you know?"

He's thankful that the hallways were empty – it would have been embarrassing to be caught like this. He fought a blush down, and cleared his throat.

"Well, no. Anyway, let's get to the library. I'll help you with studying, and you can't say no."

He made a move to start walking again, but Nagisa held on to him tightly.

"Rei-chan… thank you."

Maybe this encouragement lark wasn't too difficult after all.

4. 涙 (Tears)

He's still not swimming fast enough.

He kept telling himself that this wasn't the hardest that he had tried, so he kept pushing, determined, even one second les would be enough.

It's still not enough.

The insides of his goggles are wet, sometimes, and it's only because it's a bit too tight. The red marks left by the rubber bands that ran along his temples were proof of that.

He can be better.

No one got to the top without a few tears, after all.

5. 霊 (Ghost)

At the train station where they got off, Nagisa would always begin with a kiss before they started their daily jog to school. The feel of his lips never really leaves Rei.

When they jogged, Nagisa is a little bit slower than him, so Rei would pace himself until they're side by side, pressed up against one another, and that too, lingered over him, even if their skin never did touch, because the warmth that Nagisa exuded seared through even the cloth of his tracksuit.

Before they got to class, Nagisa would kiss him once more, right after they change out of their running gear, and like a persistent ghost, it clung to him. During the day, it's all that Rei could think about.

Later, Rei kissed Nagisa first, and hoped the touch of his lips would linger over Nagisa's too.

6. 隷 (Obey)

His middle school track-and-field coach had been Spartan, to say the least.

Ten laps in the morning, ten laps in the evening. Their school was pretty huge too, and in his first year it had been the worst thing to ever happen to him.

Rei remembered his fierce barking, face red as he yelled from one end of the field to another. There's no respite, under this stern gaze. If they wanted to rest, he used to scream, they could do it at home. The field was for training.

He agreed with that sentiment, but most of the time, it really was too much. Come summer or winter, the coach was cruelly relentless and unchanging. Never once was there a disparity in routine.

There was probably a reason why he was so tough on them. Maybe he saw some sort of potential in them, maybe he wanted to push them so far out of their comfort zone they couldn't do anything but progress, because that was the only way to make a bunch of adolescents possibly see themselves get somewhere. He's never really sure, at the end of the day, because that coach wasn't one for nice words. Maybe there wasn't a reason at all – maybe he was just doing his job.

At his first track meet, Rei got second place for pole vaults.

After that, he obeyed every single command wordlessly.

Nowadays, he's almost wistful, thinking about middle school life. A Spartan coach seems like a luxury now, one he didn't have, so he moulded his own mind and made his own, one that yelled at him every second, every minute. It's a voice louder and bolder than any other coach could give, because it's his own voice. Rei knew his own limits, and all it did was make him want to go further.

He didn't see any sort of potential in his own swimming, but if he listened to that voice hard enough, he thought he might just prove himself wrong.

7. 齢 (Age)

He's not sure where he saw himself in fifteen years.

Not in five.

Not when he's graduated.

Really, where does he want to go from here?

It's easy to fall give in to the false security that he could afford to rest, because he's only a first year, but good things that happen are the result of long-term effort and determination.

Back in middle-school, he used to think that there was a chance he could go pro in track. He doesn't think that way anymore, especially not after Nagisa and Makoto told him about Rin. He definitely didn't have the dedication to move to another country and commit to track alone.

His mother always wanted a doctor in the family. His father had a preference for law. His brother was an engineer. Wasn't a cousin of theirs a banker?

Was there something that he liked so much that he'd want to do for the rest of his life? Or is he, like everyone else, doomed to a 9 to 5 job behind a desk all day? He hopes that's not the case.

The years to come were a terrifying thought. Age would not bring him freedom; he would only sink deeper in to his cage.

8. 伶 (Actor)

It's tiring, even though pretence was easy.

"Are you okay?"

Nagisa is worried, and Rei is grateful. Still.

"I'm fine," He smiles softly before turning away. "I think I'll take a shower." When he walks away, he doesn't hear Nagisa follow.

The changing rooms are unsurprisingly empty when he enters, and water dripped from him, darkening the wooden floor, marking his trail. He stopped before his locker, and sniffed. His vision was blurring slightly, watery. The droplets that fell from his face marked the wooden floor as well, no different from the pool water.

"Rei-chan."

He blinks his eyes clear. "Nagisa?"

"Rei-chan. You're really not good at acting." Nagisa's smile is warm, as usual. His knees buckle, exhausted, and Nagisa pulls him close, so he rests his weary head on the comforting shoulder.

"Sorry. I'm just tired."

"It's okay, Rei-chan."

Nagisa doesn't tell him to stop acting, but Rei stops anyway.

9. 嶺 (Peak)

He likes the rush of wind against his skin as he jumps, the way it ruffles his hair, the breeze a brush against his cheeks. It's the closest he can get to flying, after all.

In that brief moment where he's up in the air, there's a thrill in his limbs that cry out for that instant to last just one second longer. When he goes higher, it feels like he's flying longer.

He wants to jump so high that it's all right to forget to come down.

Finding out how far he could go was his favourite challenge. Simply calculating to derive the answer wasn't enough – the beauty of things was in the execution. Feeling the arc in the trajectory of his jump, reaching the apex of the curve as his body twisted over the pole, and performing the perfect vault was the greatest feeling in the world.

If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was jumping over a mountain. The greatest shame of human evolution, if you asked him, was their inability to fly.

Sometimes, he lets the laughter escape him, a laugh that's drenched in joy and delight. Sometimes, that laugh is carried in the wind, and he memorised every jump that he makes, lets them echo in his mind.

It never really does feel like enough, but Rei thinks that eventually, it might be.

10. 例 (Example)

He leaned in closer to the screen, frowning. Despite the silence (he had turned off the audio for the vid), Rei could hear the cheer of the audience in the stands, the commentator's loud, boisterous voice, and in his blood he could feel the heat of the competition, the passion and the ferocity of the swimmers, all equally desperate to come in first place.

It's not something that's he's a stranger to, having had experience in track, and the mood is about the same, but there was something about swimming that just set it apart from track.

He still can't pin-point it precisely. The competition is in a few days, and he wonders if he'll be able to tell it by then.

As he surveyed the swimmers' strokes, first at normal speed, then slow, and slower, he feels frustration building in him. He, and the entire team, all know that he's not ready, and this is an outrageous gamble that everyone was taking, wasn't it? More than just being a liability, more than the semblance of inadequacy that he could feel in him, it's the absolute feeling of uncertainty, like walking in blind and trying to understand on feel and sense alone that hurt.

No logical equation. No textbook example to follow by. No derived answer to mounting questions.

Wasn't that the point of swimming, though? But while it was idealistic to imagine that swimming without calculations was freeing, reality was a shackle and bolt that he has learnt to live with, and even so, only barely.

_Much less swim with it_.

There was security in numbers. Safety in form and function of statistics. Rei picks up his pencil, and began to calculate.

11. 零 (Zero)

As they used to say, it was all about personal perception.

"Ryugazaki! One more time!"

The back of his leg stung from where it was hit when the bar fell. Gingerly, he moved his foot out from where he had been sitting on it – there's a hint of an ache in his ankle – and he limped towards the starting point again in growing unease and frustration.

He felt the eyes of his coach on him, and the fibreglass pole is warm to the touch.

"Ryugazaki, get off the track."

"Sensei?"

"I don't need someone who is doing this half-arsed. Go home and think about whether you really want to join the team."

Rei bowed his head. He's only joined track on a lark. There was no reason for him to face his kind of humiliation. His ankle throbbed as he staggered off field, and he flung the pole aside.

But to accomplish something from ground zero…

To _actually_ manage that…

He hoped the clinic was still open at this hour.

12. 麗 (Beautiful)

He watched Nagisa sitting across from him. Watched the brightness in his glassy eyes, and the motion of his reflection in them. Nagisa seemed to be doing the same. Were they having a staring contest of some sort?

Nagisa blinked first, grinning at him, and he felt himself smile in response. He recognised that smile on Nagisa, the one where he's sly and amused all together, as if knowing some sort of secret that Rei didn't know.

"Nagisa-kun?"

"Rei-chan." Nagisa beamed at him, and his own smile widened.

Nagisa was amazing, really. Fantastic, brilliant, bea-

"Rei-chan. You're really beautiful, you know?"

Ah. Well. _That_ bit's always a surprise.


End file.
